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enThe Social Utilityhttps://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2012/12/social-utility
<div class="field field-name-field-import-deck field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Deck:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Mastering multi-channel communications for customer service success.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-byline field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Byline:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Paul Woods<b> </b></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-bio field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Author Bio:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><b>Paul Woods</b> is industry solutions lead at HP Exstream Enterprise Software.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-volume field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Magazine Volume:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Fortnightly Magazine - December 2012</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>More than ever before, utilities are presented with extraordinary opportunities to engage customers in dialogues that lead to better understanding, deeper connection, mutually beneficial savings and greater energy consumption awareness. With the simultaneous proliferation of both smart meters and smart phones, utilities not only have the ability to access meaningful energy usage data, but also the means and platforms to cost-effectively communicate it in ways that a majority of customers prefer to receive it.</p>
<p>So why are so few taking advantage of the rapid evolution in communications?</p>
<p>Given the scope and stakes of the opportunities at hand, many utilities have silos of information and expertise that should be shared and leveraged to avoid what, to most observers, appears to be a noticeable lack of initiative and creativity in terms of what and how they communicate with key stakeholders. Utilities want to make the necessary changes; however, bureaucracy and legacy systems have slowed the process. But this window of opportunity won’t remain open forever. It’s time for utilities to push back and take advantage of the unprecedented efficiency, reach, and power of today’s media platforms, and strategically position themselves in a consumer environment increasingly shaped by digital communications.</p>
<p>For decision makers at many utility companies, that sounds fine—but where to start?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many utilities have little precedent or internal resources from which to draw. Traditionally, utilities haven’t been required to be leaders in innovative ways to engage consumers. Particularly when compared to telecommunications companies, banks, cable providers, and other organizations that compete in crowded markets where consumers can switch providers at a moment’s notice, utilities haven’t felt the pressure to consistently assess the effectiveness of their communication plans.</p>
<p>But while utilities have focused elsewhere, other companies have made substantial investments in their digital, mobile and social media strategies. Over the past several years, other industries have heeded the imperative driven by the rapid evolution of consumer-facing technologies, augmenting conventional blanket marketing and passive broadcast strategies with a multi-tiered approach to communications. In the process, they’ve established the internal infrastructures and processes necessary to effectively identify, assess, and implement best practices for emerging media platforms and outlets. These efforts are paying off. Forward-thinking companies that have committed to diversifying their communications strategies now set the standards for consumer engagement.</p>
<p>The fact that many utilities haven’t kept pace means that they have fallen behind and are forced to play catch-up with what consumers expect, and even demand. The irony is that utilities often have the most to gain—and consequently, the most to lose—from the way they interact with their customers.</p>
<p>While it’s true that utilities in traditionally regulated states generally don’t have to worry much about retail competition, they now have to deal with public perception more than ever before. And with the widespread adoption of both social media platforms and increasingly intuitive mobile devices, public perception is more public—and more powerful—than ever.</p>
<p>If Twitter can galvanize enough opposition to topple the regime in Egypt, don’t think for a second that it can’t dramatically affect a rate case or stimulate serious public outcry about smart meters. This is a lesson some utilities have learned the hard way—quickly.</p>
<p>A few best practices and critical first steps can help utilities start harnessing the benefits of digital communications.</p>
<h4>Looking Beyond Utilities</h4>
<p>Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” The fact that utilities arguably lag behind other industries in terms of digital and social media engagement isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That is, it’s not a bad thing if decision makers at utility companies acknowledge it and seek to adopt best practices from other industries. In fact, utilities can thank the telecommunications companies, banks, and media providers for performing valuable market research. Many of these companies have made substantial investments in strategies and platforms that have failed and been abandoned. At the same time, communications experts have watched and extensively documented what works and what doesn’t work. Digital and social engagement certainly isn’t static at this point—it continues to evolve furiously—but baseline best practices have been clearly established.</p>
<p>There’s no need for utilities to start from scratch or try to reinvent the wheel. Companies can look outside the industry to assess successes and failures. Facebook, Twitter, direct text messaging, and even such relatively new sites like Pinterest offer substantial benefits and opportunities for utilities. Companies needn’t waste internal and capital resources trying to recreate these platforms. Instead they can find ways to use them to the company’s advantage. These are the places where customers are already gathering and communicating. It’s well known that these conversations will happen whether utilities are present or not. It’s important that utilities join social platform conversations to help shape and influence the dialogue.</p>
<h4>Know Your Audience</h4>
<p>The power of a multi-tiered approach to communications rests in the ability to craft the most appropriate messages for a given target audience, and to deliver those messages in ways that will be most effective. Utilities should learn the preferences of each specific customer and personalize communications such as bills, usage summaries, and crisis alerts for blackouts and energy demand spikes. Traditional mail, e-mail, SMS, social media, and mobile apps all have a place and a role—but that place and role changes per customer and per message.</p>
<p>For example, just because a customer has elected to follow a utility company on Twitter doesn’t mean that tweeting is the best way to communicate an outage to that customer. Utilities don’t want to broadcast to an open, public Twitter network that there are dozens or hundreds of homes at the end of a primary distribution line with no electricity; it doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to understand that an outage means many homes will be empty—with alarm systems offline—as residents take in a movie or do a little shopping while they wait for power to be restored. Money spent building the mechanisms to support SMS or other direct messaging capabilities to communicate estimated outage times is a far wiser investment than paying damages in a lawsuit because a tweet or an outage map directed criminals to the easiest targets.</p>
<p>While understanding such situational factors is important, recognizing audience demographics and preferences is critical as well. And sometimes the numbers don’t tell the whole story. <a href="http://www.pikeresearch.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/SMUS-12-Pike-Research.pdf" target="_blank">A recent study</a> by Pike Research reveals that 83 percent of people under 30, and 79 percent of people between 30 and 44, are active on social networks, granting utilities easy access to a majority of customers. But as Baby Boomers retire, they’re increasingly active on social media as well. Often these are people with solid retirement income, strong networks of friends and neighbors, and ample time to spend coordinating opposition to rate increases or other utility initiatives. The wrong message to this powerful and engaged consumer base can have serious consequences for a utility.</p>
<p>At the same time, mobile technology has become so astoundingly intuitive, there’s little barrier to entry. Anyone can become an influencer and inspire others to fight a rate increase, smart meter installation, or a smart grid surcharge. One Midwest utility company experienced first hand the power of a digitally connected and motivated customer base, eventually spending considerably more time, effort, and valuable resources that it otherwise might have to get a smart grid bill through the state legislature.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when properly engaged, even the most vocal detractors can become passionate advocates, lending credibility to messages that can reach thousands of consumers. For effective communications, establishing the proper tone of specific messages hinges on quickly assessing the audience the utility hopes to reach. That can be a critical decision, and it often needs to be made quickly and in real time through the appropriate approval process. Once a message hits a digital platform, it can be almost impossible to retract.</p>
<h4>Turning Crisis into Opportunity</h4>
<p>Given the proactive and personal nature of digital, mobile and social communications, utilities can now change the dynamics that have long defined their relationship with customers. Whereas the primary communication in the past centered on a monthly paper bill, new communication tools can turn crises into opportunities by demonstrating that a utility company is engaged and concerned with what affects consumers most.</p>
<p>For example, when an outage is imminent because of demand peaks, smart grid technology can isolate the threat into specific sectors, and allow utilities to alert customers to shift or shave load until the threat has subsided. The quicker that message is received, the better, driving decreased energy usage in real time, when it matters. It’s important to engage customers via Twitter, SMS text, email, and phone to ensure the receipt of the message. One small outage can easily turn into a large-scale disruption, affecting consumers’ daily lives, knocking out traffic lights, home security systems, and ATMs. But by using effective multi-channel communications, demand peaks can be alleviated before they cause a bigger issue.</p>
<p>On a smaller scale, utility providers can proactively alert customers in the instance of unexpectedly high energy usage or a billing discrepancy. Instead of waiting for the customer to call about the problem when he or she receives the bill in the mail, utilities can utilize multiple channels to alert customers of unusual conditions. This will allow customers to understand their usage, and it also represents valuable proactive customer service that eliminates questions—and complaints—that could arise, before a bill has even been delivered.</p>
<h4>Measuring Success</h4>
<p>One benefit utilities enjoy by establishing digital and social media plans now is that analytics and measurement have become much more substantial and sophisticated over the past few years. Gone are the days when fuzzy intangibles like “impressions,” “buzz” and “awareness” were employed as proxies to gauge effectiveness. Establishing solid metrics, tied to real business results, at the outset of any communications initiative allows a utility to measure effectiveness throughout a campaign. </p>
<p>Improvement in consumer response and interaction, reduced call center activity, e-mail open rates and click-throughs, and increased social network activity are all solid indicators of engagement. Utilities can devise action-oriented messaging for time-of-use and critical-peak pricing programs and then measure increases in participation. This will allow for accurate calculation of return on investment (ROI), while establishing processes to tailor or revise messaging as needed.</p>
<p>Also, participation in social networks provides tremendous ability to assess public opinion. Even something as simple as watching retweets and mentions on Twitter can help a utility understand how it’s being perceived. It also allows for quick identification and engagement of key advocates and detractors. Proactive outreach allows the utility to amplify positive conversations and redirect criticisms to private venues.</p>
<h4>Commitment to Communications</h4>
<p>Though digital, mobile, and social media have arrived relatively suddenly, disrupting the ways organizations and companies interact, don’t think they’ll be gone just as quickly. Short-term communication strategies will only serve to position a company with a patchwork, disjointed social presence, and often will leave a trail of very public missteps in their wake. They also will create an unproductive, internal Groundhog’s Day, with companies constantly forced to answer the same questions, have the same meetings, and re-budget the same expenses for each communications campaign. It also can force a company to make tough decisions at the worst possible time—while a crisis is unfolding and the company is under intense scrutiny. The best time to create a crisis plan is before a company needs one.</p>
<p>The challenges and opportunities presented by new media require executives to think long-term. Utilties should establish the core planning, infrastructure, and protocols for digital communications, and then tailor accordingly. This often will entail corporate communications, customer service, marketing, and IT departments working closely together. The process will include developing messaging and platforms to deliver those messages; designating key communicators who are agile enough to speak for the company in real time; and establishing a process to identify the proper analytics to inform decisions. It makes no sense to repeat this process quarterly or even yearly. As daunting as it might seem to set up, the reach and power of social media and digital and mobile technology often makes maintaining a strong communications presence more cost-effective and efficient than it would be otherwise.</p>
<p>As consumers within all demographic groups increasingly gravitate toward electronic channels, including social media, utilities must embrace these new opportunities to reach customers on a deeper level of engagement. With the ever-evolving use of technology, today’s energy customer is different from that of five years ago, and utilities must evolve accordingly to succeed. Likewise the communications landscape has changed dramatically. If an organization’s communications strategy hasn’t changed much over the years, that should be considered a red flag—and a green light to move forward. As many utilities are discovering, the benefits of a multi-tiered approach to communications are often immeasurably greater than the expenses—and the costs of not having one can be far greater than they ever anticipated.</p>
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<div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<a href="/tags/social-networks">Social networks</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/multi-channel-communication">multi-channel communication</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/customer-service">Customer service</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/smart-meter">Smart meter</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/smart-phone">smart phone</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/mobile-device">mobile device</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/hp-exstream-enterprise-software">HP Exstream Enterprise Software</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/facebook">Facebook</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/twitter">Twitter</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/text-messaging">text messaging</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/pinterest">Pinterest</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/pike-research">Pike Research</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/smart-grid">Smart grid</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/call-center">call center</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/return-investment">return on investment</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/roi">ROI</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/crisis-plan">crisis plan</a> </div>
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Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:16:45 +0000puradmin16369 at https://www.fortnightly.com